Air weapons are known, which are usually employed in a sport known as airsoft and comprise loader devices, commonly known as grenades or BB-shower, adapted to allow simultaneous ejection of a plurality of BB-shot balls at each shot of the weapon.
Generally, these loader devices comprise a cylindrical body having a front portion with a plurality of radially offset longitudinal channels, which are adapted to contain a predetermined amount of BB-shot balls.
Furthermore, these devices have a chamber for accumulation of pressurized gas and a trigger element for promoting the instantaneous release of gas into the channels and ejection of the BB-shot from the barrel of the weapon.
An elastic holding member is also provided, in a seat formed on the outer surface of the cylindrical body, for preventing unintentional release of the BB-shot from the channels.
Such devices are loaded with BB-shot, before being placed on the weapon, by appropriate manually actuated tools, that are widely used in the art.
For example, JP2004309040 discloses a manual loading tool for loader devices comprising a hollow box-like body for containing BB-shot and an actuator element which is adapted to be actuated by the user to promote the release of a row of BB-shot balls through an outlet.
This tool has a cylindrical end portion defining the outlet and adapted to be introduced with a small clearance into a channel to transfer the BB-shot therein, while preventing any loss of BB-shot during loading.
Likewise, TWM283155 discloses a device having a hollow BB-shot containing body and a manual mechanism for promoting BB-shot release through an outlet.
A first drawback of these arrangements is that these tools promote at each actuation the release of one row of BB-shot balls at a time.
Due to this feature, the loading process of the loader device is particularly long and labor intensive as the device must be manually actuated as many times as there are channels in it, for full loading.
A further drawback is that these tools have poor versatility, as they allow transfer of BB-shot with only one predetermined diameter.
This is because the outlet of the device has a diameter substantially close to that of the cartridge channels, such that its end portion may be inserted therein and a BB-shot ball having a slightly smaller diameter than the channel may be transferred.
Therefore, the user shall be equipped with various types of loader devices, designed to store BB-shot of different sizes, to be transferred into cartridges having channels of different diameters.
Finally, an important drawback is that the relative complexity of these devices may cause jamming of the actuator during cartridge loading, especially when the actuator is actuated may times during a small interval of time. Furthermore, as stated by EsaToivonen on the Airsoft Soldier website, BB-shot cartridges are known, which comprise a cylindrical body having a plurality of channels for housing respective rows of BB-shot balls. Nevertheless, these cartridges are difficult to load, as they are weakly coupled to the loader, which may lead to BB-shot release from the container during loading.